Indie Sound Trail Brings ‘Chorus of the Coast’ to Tulunadu, Blending Music, Art and Heritage
Homecoming show in association with Art Kanara Trust explores the coast through music, photography, food, heritage and personal stories
Mangaluru: What happens when a place is not merely remembered but heard?
Independent music and cultural platform Indie Sound Trail (IST) brings its Stories in Sound series to Tulunadu with Chorus of the Coast — The Homecoming Show, organised in association with Art Kanara Trust.
Scheduled for October 11, the event will bring together independent music, photography, food, stories and archival material aboard a boat along the Mangaluru coast. More than a concert, Chorus of the Coast presents Tulunadu through its people, memories, cultural practices, and creative expressions that continue to shape the region.
Tulunadu, Heard in the Present
Tulunadu’s identity has long been shaped by its people, language, landscape, food, traditions, stories, and movement across the coast. Culture, however, is never static. It changes over time, moves between generations and takes on new forms.
Stories in Sound explores this evolution through music, using sound as a lens to understand the people, places, memories and creative expressions that define a region.
For Chorus of the Coast, IST brings together artists with different relationships with Tulunadu — those rooted in the region, those returning to it, and those who have encountered it from outside. Together, they offer diverse perspectives on the region and its influence on those who live in or have experienced it.
“We believe cultural ecosystems grow when artists are given both a platform and an audience willing to discover. Regions like Tulunadu have an extraordinary depth of creative talent, and we want to help create pathways for that talent to be seen, nurtured and carried forward.
“But this is also about the audience — creating an appreciation for experiences that are more considered, culturally rooted and creatively ambitious, and showing that you don’t have to leave the region to encounter something exceptional. If we can enable more artists and inspire more experiences to happen here, we begin to build a cultural ecosystem that can sustain itself,” said Carol Pinto of Indie Sound Trail.
Celebrating Tulu Script and Contemporary Culture
The timing of Chorus of the Coast is significant: the event takes place a day after World Tulu Script Day, observed on October 10. The day recognises the history and cultural significance of the Tulu script and its role in preserving and expressing Tulu language and literature.
Rather than presenting Tulu as something confined to the past, Chorus of the Coast explores how the language and the wider cultural identity of Tulunadu are expressed today and how they may continue to evolve.
As part of this initiative, Indie Sound Trail has partnered with Solmelu Studios, its official lettering partner, to incorporate the Tulu script into the visual identity of the event. Through its work with the Taulava Aksharamala, the studio brings the script into the stage design and overall experience, placing it within a contemporary cultural context.
While contemporary music will bring Tulu to the forefront, photography, food, stories, heritage and lived experiences will offer a broader exploration of Tulunadu’s cultural landscape.
The initiative aims to make the language and its script more visible, accessible and relevant to contemporary audiences, encouraging people to discover, learn and engage with them. Its purpose extends beyond preservation to exploring how culture continues to evolve, find new forms of expression and contribute to a thriving cultural ecosystem.
“For me, bringing Tulu script into Chorus of the Coast is about creating a space where language, music and visual culture can coexist and contribute to a stronger cultural ecosystem. We want to make the script more accessible, not only as something inherited from the past but as a living form that people can learn, use and carry forward.
“The idea of ‘Kaḍala Karæta Pāḍdana’, meaning ‘Songs of the Coast’, felt especially appropriate because pāḍdana represents the way songs, stories and memories have travelled across generations in Tulu culture. Bringing these words onto a contemporary stage creates a conversation between where we come from and where we are going.
“For us, revival is not about looking backwards. It is about giving the language and its script a contemporary vocabulary and making them part of a rooted yet global cultural narrative. When we make these forms visible, accessible and relevant to new audiences, we create the possibility of sustaining them into the future,” said Nishant Ratnakar, founder of Solmelu Studios.
Bringing Archives into Conversation with Living Culture
The project is being presented in association with Art Kanara Trust, a Mangaluru-based non-profit organisation working across art, culture, heritage, research and documentation, with a particular focus on coastal Karnataka.
Through exhibitions, publications, research, talks, seminars, workshops and community engagement, the Trust brings regional histories, artistic practices and lived experiences into the public domain.
Its Mangalore Art & Archival Project (MAAP), an initiative undertaken in association with the INTACH Mangaluru Chapter, seeks to build a collective archive documenting the region’s people, places, histories, memories and cultural practices.
For Chorus of the Coast, archival material will be presented alongside contemporary music, allowing audiences to explore aspects of the region’s past while engaging with how its culture is expressed today.
“An archive is not only about preserving the past. It is also about understanding what is happening around us today. Tulunadu has always been shaped by movement, exchange, and the lives of its people, and those stories continue to evolve.
“We see this collaboration with Indie Sound Trail as an opportunity to bring archival memory into conversation with contemporary music and audiences, and to create new ways of seeing, engaging with, and contributing to the cultural landscape of the coast,” said Nemiraj Shetty of Art Kanara Trust.
A Homecoming Through Sound
At the heart of the event are musical acts, each reflecting a different relationship with Tulunadu.
Alva Kuuto, led by Mangaluru-born musician Praveen Alva, brings contemporary Tulu music rooted in coastal storytelling while exploring the sounds of the present. The project approaches Tulu not merely as a language of heritage but as a living medium for contemporary expression.
“For me, coming back to Mangaluru with music in Tulu is more than performing in my hometown. The coast has shaped the way I see, write and make music. Tulu is not just something we inherit from the past — it is a language we can use to talk about who we are today.
“I think that is what makes this collaboration exciting: bringing music, art, memory and the city into the same space,” said Praveen Alva, musician and founder of Alva Kuuto.
Echoes in the Dusk, a two-piece acoustic act from Mangaluru’s independent music scene, will offer an English-language perspective through dual guitar harmonies and an atmospheric, understated sound.
Joel Austin brings the perspective of an artist discovering a place from the outside. Originally from elsewhere, Austin creates music spanning rock, country, and blues. His debut EP, The Colour of Water, was inspired by and written during a getaway in Mangaluru, illustrating how a place can influence an artist’s creative work even when it is not home.
Together, the artists represent different ways of connecting with a place — through roots, return and discovery.
The Coast Becomes the Venue
The boat will serve as a temporary cultural space for the evening.
The upper deck will host live music, food and conversation, accompanied by views of the sea. The lower deck will house The Floating Archive, featuring photography and cultural material presented in collaboration with Art Kanara Trust.
As the evening progresses from daylight to golden hour and dusk, the coastal setting itself will become part of the experience.
Music will give Tulunadu a voice, photography will capture its memories, food will evoke its flavours, and the archive will provide historical context. Above all, the people of the region will remain central to its evolving cultural identity.
Beyond the Event
For Indie Sound Trail, Chorus of the Coast marks the beginning of a larger cultural initiative.
Stories in Sound is being developed as an ongoing platform to explore places through their sounds, stories and creative communities. Each edition will document a different place through its artists, cultural practices, memories and contemporary experiences.
With Chorus of the Coast, the journey begins in Tulunadu.
At a time when Tulu and its cultural identity are receiving renewed public attention, the initiative offers a celebration that looks beyond the past to examine how the region’s culture is being expressed today.
Culture lives not only in archives but also in the songs people write, the languages they speak, the food they share, the memories they carry, and the stories they choose to tell next.
Chorus of the Coast is therefore intended not simply as a presentation of what Tulunadu once was, but as a snapshot of how its culture continues to evolve.
Programme Details
Chorus of the Coast — The Homecoming Show
Series: Stories in Sound, Chapter 02
Date: Sunday, October 11, 2026
Time: 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Venue: A boat along the Mangaluru coast
Performers: ToddyKats, Alva Kuuto, Echoes in the Dusk and Joel Austin
In association with: Art Kanara Trust
Official lettering partner: Solmelu Studios
Experience: Music, photography, food, stories, heritage and the sea
Entry: Pre-booking only
About Indie Sound Trail
Indie Sound Trail (IST) is an independent music and cultural platform built by artists for artists. It creates experiences, initiatives and communities that connect music with the wider cultural worlds around it, supporting artists, amplifying independent voices and creating spaces where audiences can discover, participate and belong.
Stories in Sound is IST’s cultural initiative, using music as its central medium to explore people, places, memory and culture.
About Art Kanara Trust
Art Kanara Trust (AKT) is a Mangaluru-based non-profit organisation working across art, culture, heritage, research and documentation, with a focus on coastal Karnataka.
Through exhibitions, publications, research, talks, seminars, workshops and community engagement, the Trust brings regional histories, artistic practices, heritage and lived experiences into the public domain.
Through the Mangalore Art & Archival Project (MAAP), an initiative undertaken in association with the INTACH Mangaluru Chapter, the Trust is working towards building a collective archive of the region’s people, places, histories, memories and cultural practices.
About Solmelu Studios
Solmelu Studios is a creative studio exploring the Tulu language, Tulu script and the visual culture of Tulunadu through contemporary design, education and storytelling. Founded by Nishant Ratnakar, the studio works to bring Tulu script into everyday and contemporary spaces while remaining connected to its historical character and cultural context.
Through Tulu script education, calligraphy, typography, and visual storytelling, Solmelu Studios explores possibilities for the script beyond its traditional uses, incorporating it into the ways Tulunadu is represented and experienced today.
For Chorus of the Coast, Solmelu Studios serves as the official lettering partner and has created a hand-drawn Tulu-script typographic artwork reading “Kaḍala Karæta Pāḍdana” — Songs of the Coast. The artwork will form part of the concert stage’s visual environment.
The phrase brings together the coast, its language and its oral traditions. In Tulu, pāḍdana refers to songs and orally transmitted narratives through which people have shared stories, memories and experiences across generations. While often associated today with ritual traditions, pāḍdana has also been part of everyday community life, including songs connected with work, family occasions, gatherings and other aspects of social life.
The lettering is therefore more than a visual treatment of the event title. It represents an effort to place Tulu script, language and oral culture within a contemporary creative experience.
